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I think involving the game community from the start is a fantastic way for developers to gauge the overall interest in their efforts. It's inspiring and exciting to see something you are working so hard towards is appreciated by the community with more than just words.

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"A lot of it is to do with the scale," he said. "When I used to make games [in the 1990s], if you sold 50,000 or 100,000 copies, it was a huge deal. Then it was several hundred thousand. Then it was a million. Now we're seeing games that sell 20 million.

"If you can manage a business that sells 500,000 copies of a game, it's a good business. But EA or Activision aren't interested in that business, because in their cost structure, they have to be making $100 million dollars plus in revenue, no matter what. They're only interested in something that sells four or five million units."

It's a reflection of the same story that we've been hearing for the past two or three years: mid-tier developers -- the ones that are somewhere between low-cost productions and high-budget, high-profile releases, continue to be squeezed out. The publishers, by focusing on blockbusters, have created a vacuum that talented developers with an understanding of social media have been only too willing to fill.

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This thread has a ton of really interesting infographics/data and articles. Thanks to everyone who posted.

As to the OP...

The idea of private funding isn't new - but the internet is making it easier. The concept of asking for donations, or sponsorship, isn't most certainly not a recent development. So the idea - and the type of sponsorship - is totally okay to me.

I think most of the problems that arise come from the advent of technology - it's just so much easier to commit fraud when paired with the anonymity of the internet. And while fraud isn't new (donating to charity doesn't guarantee your money is actually used for charitable purposes, after all), it's just that much more obvious when it happens online.

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I really like that crowd funding is something that is becoming more and more of a reality. It allows like you said to give directly to the people creating the games that you find interesting. On top of that depending on what they are doing in their crowd funding you can get a little something for your investment.

The inovation though is the main that attracts me to things like crowd funding. Most investers won't pay for a game that they find difficult to anticipate a return on their investment. Games that come with a fanbase such as a 2nd 3rd or 4th installment on an origonal successful idea or games based off popular culture like starwars will be funded because its easier to guess at how much the game will make. Investers are only interested in making their money back which isn't bad but it means they won't take risks on innovative ideas that don't have a massive fan base that could end up being a cash sinkhole.

I feel that not just crowd funding but the ability to release your game without having to go threw a publisher to create and distribute the game via retailers has really unleashed a new generation of gaming. New ideas, some good some bad are flooding the market and we're seeing that we have more options than the 2nd 3rd 4th, 5th remake of games where ultimitly we may end up with final fantasy XXVIII

That's not to say that it is perfect. In some cases I can see your donation going into a game that ultimitly falls short of its goals. Cases like Kickstarter you can get your money back if they don't meet their goals but that's not always going to be the case. In the end though it was your choice to invest in the game.

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I truly believe that we'll see the next great game to come from crowd funded gaming. Hell, Minecraft is more or less a success story from crowd funding, it just didn't come from a place like Kickstarter.

With Kickstarter, you'll see the ability for small groups of programmers to be able to come together and create their games while staying true to their original vision of their game. Publishing the game is even becoming easier where digital downloads are becoming more of the norm. If the game is good, word of mouth with also carry the day for advertisement (again, look at minecraft).

It's going to be a very interesting time for gaming once these early crowd funded games start to be released.

Bad as public are not as professional as publishers at assessing risk/requirements for a project

Probably not going to prevent Braben or Molyneux from achieving funding given their names and the well chosen genre to crowdfund.

(2) Should established games-makers use Kickstarter platform, and does this have a negative impact on indies eg "kickstarter fatigue"?

Mostly this is fallacious:

Each project can be assessed on it's own merits by individuals

Each project has more responsibility to coordinate with backers beyond mere customers

Trend might add competition to indies and bigger recognition of names is an advantage, but a good pitch, idea and demonstration of experience of being able to deliver is more or less an even playing-field for criteria that are important for backers to consider.

Crowdfunding platform will change over time; perhaps more targetted eg indie-video-games category could be added - although defining "indie" is somewhat tricky.

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Of all the many interesting discussions raised by the Kickstarter phenomenon of 2012, there’s one that’s only going to get more contentious: release dates. When a gaming project sets up a Kickstarter, they put an estimated date for the delivery of their stretch goals. And since these inevitably include a copy of the game, in doing this, developers are announcing a release date, often before they’ve even drawn any concept art. That’s not really how games development works. And so far, people don’t seem so hot on the guessing. Below is an epic list of all the $100k+ Kickstarters successful this year, and how they’re doing at keeping us up to date.

"Thank you so much for the incredible response to the game," reads an update on the Kickstarter. "We're shutting down the kickstarter account but this is by no means the end of Police Warfare. News will be coming."

Thought the money is withheld untill the time has elapsed, and goal reached? that kinda makes perfect sense to do that..

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Did Obsidian start thinking about running a Kickstarter because of Double Fine's success?

Chris Avellone: As soon as Tim Schafer did his Kickstarter, we became aware of how much support there could be for products that publishers might discount. I'd pretty much lost hope that we'd ever see another adventure game that wasn't on the DS or the iPhone. And then suddenly Kickstarter happened, and I realised that "holy shit, we're going to get another adventure game because of all this." Then Brian Fargo moved really quickly, and suddenly it was pretty clear that people also wanted an old-school RPG.

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But the cool thing about Kickstarter is that you can see within 30 days whether people are going to like your project or not. Which is much better than finding out at the end whether they like it or not.

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And that's not normally a conversation you can ever have with players, with the traditional publisher model. I mean, for example, there's been certain design elements that other Kickstarters have had, that they've announced in their Kickstarter, where the players have just lashed back and said, "No, we don't want those things". As far as I'm concerned, that ends up being great, because you don't have to waste any resources implementing things that the player never wanted in the first place.

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But the nice thing about Kickstarter is that people have already paid for the title. So anything else that happens after that is great, but we know what our budget is, and practically speaking, that's all we're really focused on: "We're going to make a game for this amount of money."

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Why is it that this style of game became non-viable, in a commercial sense? Why wouldn't publishers support this type of project?

CA: I don't know if I have a good answer for that. I do know that there's one technical limitation: when you're developing an RPG for the consoles -- which most publishers want because it generates the most revenue -- it's often very difficult to control a party of characters, with either the PlayStation controller or the Xbox controller.

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A lot of those [Infinity Engine] titles were PC-only, and that's not really an appealing pitch to any publisher. They don't really want a PC-only title, because that's not going to maximize their revenue.

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It seems like the market was in a mindset where "We can only do blockbusters." Perhaps now it's fragmenting a bit, and there are more niches available?

CA: I think so. I do know that usually when we're discussing budgets for games, they can range anywhere from $20 to $30 million for development, but that doesn't account for all the marketing budget or any of the auxiliary resources like quality assurance or production support or localization, or even paying for sound effects and audio and things like that. The budgets for [triple-A] games are just insane, but they generate a lot of revenue.

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CA: It's good to see that level of support. It seems like with smaller projects, and/or indie projects, that's the best time for people to experiment with new innovative mechanics that might not [be viable] on a larger, more expensive scale. And seeing them proved out in one of those smaller titles I think is healthy for the industry. You need that experimental test bed to showcase why these ideas are cool.

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I recommend Indie-Go-Go because you get to keep your earnings whether you reach the goal or not. That's pretty sweet. I can design a kick-ass presentation package complete with business plan, executive summary and private placement memorandum if you really want to juice your crowdfunding potential.

DM me for more info on crowdfunding options. I would be excited to help promote ambitious up-and-coming devs out there!

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It was bound to happen eventually. Video game crowdsourcing via Kickstarter finally had its first so-close-it's-unfair moment, when M.U.L.E.-inspired trading sim Alpha Colony missed its $50,000 goal by just $28.

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Kickstarter is perhaps the biggest story in the world of gaming since the birth of the home video console or the integration of online components into consumer entertainment. No new product, innovation, or invention has carried with it such immense potential for shifting the way the industry plans, builds, and delivers its products. And with projects covering everything from hardware to companion apps, it's almost impossible now to imagine a gaming world without Kickstarter, even though it was our reality just a few short months ago.

The legacy of Kickstarter is one that we're witnessing in real-time. Most of the major successful projects are slated for late 2013/early 2014 releases, giving us plenty of time to speculate on what may or may not go wrong with the crowd-funding model and the products it bears. Over the next year, games will either make it to market or they won't. Developers will squander their budgets or release on time. It's all up in the air.

With that in mind, we thought now would be a good time to look back on some of the biggest MMO Kickstarter projects of 2012. The fate of some of these titles is inexorably tied to the fate of Kickstarter as a viable game-creating platform -- and maybe even crowd-sourcing as a whole.

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Originally posted by DarthRichardson

I recommend Indie-Go-Go because you get to keep your earnings whether you reach the goal or not. That's pretty sweet. I can design a kick-ass presentation package complete with business plan, executive summary and private placement memorandum if you really want to juice your crowdfunding potential.

DM me for more info on crowdfunding options. I would be excited to help promote ambitious up-and-coming devs out there!